Skate boarder injured in MDI accident

BAR HARBOR, Maine — An Orono man was taken to a Bangor hospital early Monday morning after he apparently fell off his skateboard and struck his head while trying to travel across Mount Desert Island, according to local police.

Alex Kenney, 27, was found lying by the side of Route 233 by a motorist around 1 a.m., according to Sgt. Shaun Farrar of the Bar Harbor Police Department. Kenney was about a half-mile west of Acadia National Park headquarters and had suffered a head injury, Farrar said.

“He was not talking,” Farrar said of the injured man. “He was not coherent at all.”

Kenney was not wearing a helmet, according to Farrar.

Kenney was flown by LifeFlight helicopter to Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, the officer said. He said he did not know how badly Kenney was hurt. An EMMC spokeswoman said Monday afternoon that she had no information on Kenney.

Police at first thought Kenney may have been hit by a car or maybe had jumped out of a moving vehicle, the officer said. But aside from the apparent head injury, Kenney did not suffer any broken bones or have any rips in his clothes.

It wasn’t until hours later that police realized he had been traveling on a long board between three and four feet long, Farrar said.

After a female friend told police she had driven Kenney and the skateboard to Bar Harbor on Sunday morning, police returned to the accident scene and found the long board off the side of the road in the woods about 450 feet downhill from where Kenney was found, the sergeant said. Kenney was traveling on a downhill section of the road about a mile long when he apparently fell off the board.

Farrar said Police think Kenney, who works at a Bar Harbor restaurant, may have been en route between downtown Bar Harbor and the friend’s house in the village of Hall Quarry in the town of Mount Desert, a distance of about 10 miles, when the accident occurred. He said police suspect Kenney may have been drinking because they found a “tall boy” can of Pabst Blue Ribbon, which was about one-third full of still-chilly beer, in the ditch near where Kenney was found.

The accident is at least the second in recent years in which someone has been injured while skateboarding without a helmet on a road in or near Acadia National Park.

On Sept. 30, 2008, Corey O’Brien of Seal Harbor hit his head while skateboarding on West Street Extension inside the park, Acadia rangers said at the time. O’Brien died from his injuries a few days later.